Regnum Christi: Love for the Church and the Pope

I’ve been reading the Getting Started manual for Regnum Christi over the past several months and wanted to share some things I read recently in Module #10, which discusses a central trait of Regnum Christi: Love for the Church and the Pope:

Regnum Christi is not its own thing.Â And it doesn’t do its own thing.Â Regnum Christi is a battalion of dedicated, enthusiastic apostles within and for the Church.Â It does the Church’s thing: it spreads the Kingdom of Christ.

God inspired the Movement’s charism (a Christ-centered spirituality and an effective apostolic action) for the same reason that he inspires every new charism: to help renew and build up the Church….The redemption that Christ won at so high a price reaches the world through the Church.Â It doesn’t reach the world through Regnum Christi or any other ecclesial movement, except in so far as they are rooted in the Church; it reaches the world through the testimony and the sacraments of the Church.

The chapter continues with catechesis about Christ establishing his Church, St. Peter’s primacy and apostolic succession, then explains how we as Regnum Christi members live out our love and dedication to the Church and the Pope: “The Pope is the Vicar of Christ, the visible head of the Church on earth, so then–if we want to serve the Church–we need to be always in step with the Pope, neither ahead nor behind, but always right beside him.”

One thought on “Regnum Christi: Love for the Church and the Pope”

The beauty of that teaching of Regnum Christi is that it creates solidarity within the Church. If we are divided against ourselves, how can be be strong? How can we evangelize?

It’s been my experience that demonstrating solidarity with the Pope affirms my local clergy in their vocation—they are surprised by it, and knowing they have that support, gives them courage to proclaim the full message of the Good News even more fearlessly.